Obama's get rich quick scheme: Adopting a VAT Tax.

[Kohan]

What happened to the free market? Seriously, people are being punished for working harder. It bugs me when people say tax the rich when the majority had to work hard to get there, and most of them donate a large sum of their money anyways. Why should I go to school for 7 years to become a doctor work 60-70 hours a week when I make as much as much as a janitor when it's all said and done. America used to have a mentality: work hard and you can one day be a 'bigshot'.

Do you mean to imply that janitor hasn't worked hard? If you hadn't, too bad. You did. With its eternally increasing costs, education is more of a luxury than ever, and in a supposedly civilized world, that should not be the case. Yet these "lesser creatures," the people who slave away at low wage jobs for perhaps their entire lives, are usually people who dropped out of school not out of a distaste for learning, but necessity.

How about those teachers who helped you obtain their education? They're not rich. Fuck them, though, right? They don't work hard enough.

What about that whole "work hard and become a big shot" concept you mentioned? What about the people who work their fingers to the bone, and never get more than incremental raises which may, someday, possibly, put them in the upper lower class? In the "old America" you mentioned -- this wonderful, picture-perfect country that never existed -- those people you now view as "lucky" low-life janitorial bastards were the ones whose hard work supposedly did pay off and so they did own their own companies, they were able to retire, and in short, they could make something of themselves.

Why does this equality not exist? Education being a faster road to riches than a life of manual labor -- well, I'll live with that, I suppose. Except there is no road to riches for manual laborers. They will never get there.

In the modern day, do you have any idea how hopeless their situation is? They're temporary workers, people meant to be thrown away. Their hard work is meaningless. Their superiors, residing in office buildings far from the places they're sent to work in (as many major corporations don't have their own cleaning staffs, but hire someone else's on a contract basis), never see them scrubbing, picking up things, or going above and beyond the call of duty. Meanwhile, the people in the cubicles in those buildings don't fucking care. These are just janitors. They do their job and they're otherwise unimportant.

One fuck up -- the only kind of thing that anyone actually will communicate to their far away superiors -- and they're gone. Jobless. All their hard work, absolutely meaningless. What will they do now? The next company has someone in their hiring department like you. They look at them, see that they've somehow been fired from an "easy" job, janitorial work, and must therefore be completely incompetent. Fuck them. Let's get someone younger with a clean slate and a willingness to work for even less.

Don't point me to the rare exception to the rule, like someone who started as a clerk and became a CEO. Those stories are nice, but far too fucking uncommon to matter. Worse still, those people supposedly don't forget where they came from, but how much did their houses cost? What about their cars? How pampered are their families? You'll find that the ones who are truly generous -- not just taking advantage of tax breaks and the like -- are so horribly rare that their contributions to the world are virtually nil. Are those people great human beings? Yes. Will their existence ever be anything more than a drop in the bucket?

Not if fuckers like you who cast generalizations over others less educated than yourself have anything to say about it.

You want to fucking whine about inequality? Look at your own Goddamn perspective and how you perpetuate it.

[Psion]

Do you mean to imply that janitor hasn't worked hard? If you hadn't, too bad. You did. With its eternally increasing costs, education is more of a luxury than ever, and in a supposedly civilized world, that should not be the case. Yet these "lesser creatures," the people who slave away at low wage jobs for perhaps their entire lives, are usually people who dropped out of school not out of a distaste for learning, but necessity.

How about those teachers who helped you obtain their education? They're not rich. Fuck them, though, right? They don't work hard enough.

What about that whole "work hard and become a big shot" concept you mentioned? What about the people who work their fingers to the bone, and never get more than incremental raises which may, someday, possibly, put them in the upper lower class? In the "old America" you mentioned -- this wonderful, picture-perfect country that never existed -- those people you now view as "lucky" low-life janitorial bastards were the ones whose hard work supposedly did pay off and so they did own their own companies, they were able to retire, and in short, they could make something of themselves.

Why does this equality not exist? Education being a faster road to riches than a life of manual labor -- well, I'll live with that, I suppose. Except there is no road to riches for manual laborers. They will never get there.

In the modern day, do you have any idea how hopeless their situation is? They're temporary workers, people meant to be thrown away. Their hard work is meaningless. Their superiors, residing in office buildings far from the places they're sent to work in (as many major corporations don't have their own cleaning staffs, but hire someone else's on a contract basis), never see them scrubbing, picking up things, or going above and beyond the call of duty. Meanwhile, the people in the cubicles in those buildings don't fucking care. These are just janitors. They do their job and they're otherwise unimportant.

One fuck up -- the only kind of thing that anyone actually will communicate to their far away superiors -- and they're gone. Jobless. All their hard work, absolutely meaningless. What will they do now? The next company has someone in their hiring department like you. They look at them, see that they've somehow been fired from an "easy" job, janitorial work, and must therefore be completely incompetent. Fuck them. Let's get someone younger with a clean slate and a willingness to work for even less.

Don't point me to the rare exception to the rule, like someone who started as a clerk and became a CEO. Those stories are nice, but far too fucking uncommon to matter. Worse still, those people supposedly don't forget where they came from, but how much did their houses cost? What about their cars? How pampered are their families? You'll find that the ones who are truly generous -- not just taking advantage of tax breaks and the like -- are so horribly rare that their contributions to the world are virtually nil. Are those people great human beings? Yes. Will their existence ever be anything more than a drop in the bucket?

Not if fuckers like you who cast generalizations over others less educated than yourself have anything to say about it.

You want to fucking whine about inequality? Look at your own Goddamn perspective and how you perpetuate it.

I would've tried to put this in gentler words (and fail miserably) but fucking this ^

[Rhinox]

You're just making shit up. You need to do some research on Mr. Trump, you're just spreading lies at this point and you most likely don't even know better you're just parroting something you heard or read somewhere. You can't just fabricate a conspiracy theory that Donald Trump is immune to the credit system or whatever the fuck you were trying to convey by saying 'his 3 bankruptcies' were somehow less significant than Mr. Random Dude's.

As for your hypothetical dude, that is just an unfortunate consequence of how expensive medical bills can be. I don't give a fuck about whatever sad story you want to make up, it doesn't change that things cost money and if you can't afford it and you prove you aren't good for it, then you are punished.

No.


Edit and lol @ Mr trump
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[Rhinox]

What happened to the free market? Seriously, people are being punished for working harder. It bugs me when people say tax the rich when the majority had to work hard to get there, and most of them donate a large sum of their money anyways. Why should I go to school for 7 years to become a doctor work 60-70 hours a week when I make as much as much as a janitor when it's all said and done. America used to have a mentality: work hard and you can one day be a 'bigshot'.

lol. Majority of the super wealth today is not new its generational wealth. Forbes didn't earn a dime harder then some random.

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[kuronosan]

Man, two comments that owned the shit out of people in less than 12 hours. This is just awesome.

DERP HEY U MUST BE A HARD WERKER IF U HAVE ALL DAT MONEY N GUD PAYN JOB WIT ALL DAT POSESHUN!!!!

Hard work != Well paid/Well off

[Meresgi]

Fuck this tax if it's taking anymore out of me then im already losing on my paycheck. Hard enough getting by living on my own while in college, while working. From what ive read though its not even certain if it's happening. Like someone said, if the income tax was taken away because this VAT is such a cashcow, I wouldnt care at all, in fact it would make me spend more in the long run.

[Kuya]

More on income inequality:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/17/bu...view.html?_r=1

http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/5682

Recent research on psychological well-being has taught us that beyond a certain point, across-the-board spending increases often do little more than raise the bar for what is considered enough. A C.E.O. may think he needs a 30,000-square-foot mansion, for example, just because each of his peers has one. Although they might all be just as happy in more modest dwellings, few would be willing to downsize on their own.

People do not exist in a social vacuum. Community norms define clear expectations about what people should spend on interview suits and birthday parties. Rising inequality has thus spawned a multitude of “expenditure cascades,” whose first step is increased spending by top earners.

The rich have been spending more simply because they have so much extra money. Their spending shifts the frame of reference that shapes the demands of those just below them, who travel in overlapping social circles. So this second group, too, spends more, which shifts the frame of reference for the group just below it, and so on, all the way down the income ladder. These cascades have made it substantially more expensive for middle-class families to achieve basic financial goals.

In a recent working paper based on census data for the 100 most populous counties in the United States, Adam Seth Levine (a postdoctoral researcher in political science at Vanderbilt University), Oege Dijk (an economics Ph.D. student at the European University Institute) and I found that the counties where income inequality grew fastest also showed the biggest increases in symptoms of financial distress.

For example, even after controlling for other factors, these counties had the largest increases in bankruptcy filings.

Divorce rates are another reliable indicator of financial distress, as marriage counselors report that a high proportion of couples they see are experiencing significant financial problems. The counties with the biggest increases in inequality also reported the largest increases in divorce rates.

From the second link

Yet the striking contrast between the US and (continental) Europe illustrates this weak link. Economic theories of the welfare state predict, both on normative and positive grounds, that higher pre-tax-and-transfer income inequality should be associated with more redistribution of resources (Mirrlees 1971, Meltzer and Richard 1981). In reality however, the US distributes less than Europe despite being more unequal before taxes and transfer payments.

This rich activity in the income distribution is consistent with a one dollar, one vote theory of the welfare state. In the one dollar, one vote equilibrium, when a group of voters becomes richer (relative to the mean), redistributive policies tilt closer to its most preferred size of redistribution. Thus, for instance, when the rich become even richer, redistribution decreases which is line with the preference of the rich because with a progressive system of taxes the rich are the ones who pay more taxes. On the other hand, when the poor become richer, redistribution increases which is in line with the preference of the poor because the poor are the ones who are more likely to benefit from increased social transfers like unemployment insurance and pensions.

The one dollar, one vote theory of the welfare state contrasts sharply with the widely used ‘‘one person, one vote’’ institution (where the median class is the decisive voter) and the ‘‘utilitarian’’ model of redistribution (where the government chooses redistribution to maximise a weighted average of citizen’s welfare). A natural explanation for the one dollar, one vote result is that political influence is not uniform across groups of voters and that political participation is increasing in income. Indeed, using data from the World Value Surveys, I show that in all countries of the sample income is strongly correlated with various indices of political participation ranging from signing petitions to discussing politics with friends and from participating in demonstrations to becoming affiliated with political parties. Since money is associated with more power, income inequality has sharply different implications for redistribution than postulated by the median voter theory and the utilitarian model.

The one dollar, one vote result provides an explanation for the increasing difference in the size of the welfare state in Europe and the US. From 1980 to 2001, the growth of European redistribution exceeded the US’ by approximately 2.7%. According to my estimates, this may be because the European poor did not become relatively as poor as the American poor while the US increased redistribution relative to Europe because the American median voter became poorer. These two opposing effects cancelled each other off. However, the growth of the rich’s income relative to the mean in the US exceeded the growth of rich’s income relative to the mean in Europe. According to the one dollar, one vote theory of the welfare state, the faster growth of the rich's income in the US allowed the rich to increaseits political influence and tilt policy closer to its most preferred redistribution which involves a smaller welfare state. As a result, the growth of redistribution in the US lagged Europe’s.

Polarizing income and wealth should be treated as a social disease that should be addressed inmediately.

[Rhinox]

Fuck this tax if it's taking anymore out of me then im already losing on my paycheck. Hard enough getting by living on my own while in college, while working. From what ive read though its not even certain if it's happening. Like someone said, if the income tax was taken away because this VAT is such a cashcow, I wouldnt care at all, in fact it would make me spend more in the long run.

no it wouldnt

[Meresgi]

Polarizing income and wealth should be treated as a social disease that should be addressed inmediately.

Didn't you get the memo? The rich run everything, gtfo if you hate America.

no it wouldnt

yes, actually it would. Not having that 100$ out of my paycheck would make me maybe buy that 20$ T-shirt, or go out for dinner on a Friday once in awhile.

[Rhinox]

Common response but in reality people would pay bills rather then buy things.

btw paying bills doesn't stimulate the economy.

There is a reason we don't have a flat or fair tax in this country and thats because they're both regressive.

[Kuya]

Can someone explain to me what flat taxes and fair taxes are and why the Tea Party wants them?

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

Fairtax isn't regressive. Sales taxes are, but the Fairtax eliminates the regressiveness.

Mainly b/c they would be better for the economy, and the taxes wouldn't hidden likely making American lean more to right.

And Kuya I skimmed over your links and most seem to focus on proving there is a divergence. Fine. But your last quote seems to be the only that makes an argument as to why disparity should be eliminated.

The first argument I noticed is poorer people get their feelings hurt when a rich person spends obscene amounts of money on a gift. Boofuckinghoo. Sounds like a self-esteem problem more than an equality problem.

Second, he appears to find some interesting statistics, but does nothing to show that income equality is the cause. Nor does he define the term "financial distress."

And with the whole political influence thing, again no cause.

And Kuya how would you eliminate income disparity? Pass a law that limits what people can make?

[Kuya]

I'm not very interested in talking to you if you're going to simplify (and obfuscate) things. For example, you are referencing the recent two links i posted, and not this one:

http://www.slate.com/id/2266025/entry/2266816/

Furthermore, if income and wealth inequality show consistent association with social ills and "financial distress" (of which debt is one), then that is enough to worry about about income inequality. No fool is going to ask for a perfect correlation. The mere existence of a strong one is cause enough for action.

What actions can be taken? Higher taxes for high income and wealth, and a transference of this income into social services such as education (which not only requires more money, but an structural overhaul).

[Kuya]

Said taxed income, should also be used to promote more social mobility since there is relatively so few in the US. Which is ironic, given that the US is the place where they most believe that social mobility is achievable. American Dream or something:

Contrary to the cherished beliefs of most Americans, the United States has less social mobility than any other developed country. As Ron Haskins and Isabel Sawhill of the Brookings Institution have shown, 42 percent of American men with fathers in the bottom fifth of the income distribution remain there as compared to: Denmark, 25 percent; Sweden, 26 percent; Finland, 28 percent; Norway, 28 percent; and Britain, 30 percent. The American Dream is fast becoming a myth.

http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...o_die?page=0,4

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

Said taxed income, should also be used to promote more social mobility since there is relatively so few in the US. Which is ironic, given that the US is the place where they most believe that social mobility is achievable. American Dream or something:



http://www.foreignpolicy.com/article...o_die?page=0,4

That's one income bracket Kuya lol. Not only that, but one demographic lol. Here's one economists take.

Spoiler: show

The Nov. 13 Wall Street Journal editorial "Movin' On Up" reports on a recent U.S. Treasury study of income tax returns from 1996 and 2005. The study tracks what happened to tax filers 25 years of age and up during this 10-year period. Controlling for inflation, nearly 58 percent of the poorest income group in 1996 moved to a higher income group by 2005. Twenty-six percent of them achieved middle or upper-middle class income, and over 5 percent made it into the highest income group.



Over the decade, the inflation-adjusted median income of all tax filers rose by 24 percent. As such, it refutes Dobbs-Edwards-Huckabee claims about stagnant incomes. In fact, only one income group experienced a decline in real income. That was the richest one percent, who saw an income drop of nearly 26 percent over the 10-year period. The editors explain that these people might have been rich for a few years, had some capital gains, or could not stand up to the competition with new entrepreneurs and wealth creators.



The U.S. Treasury study confirms previous studies dating back to the 1960s, concluding, "The basic finding of this analysis is that relative income mobility is approximately the same in the last 10 years as it was in the previous decade." As such, it points to a uniquely American feature: Just because you know where a person ended up in life doesn't mean you can be sure about where he started. Most of today's higher income and wealthy did not start out that way.



What about claims of a disappearing middle class? Let's do some detective work. Controlling for inflation, in 1967, 8 percent of households had an annual income of $75,000 and up; in 2003, more than 26 percent did. In 1967, 17 percent of households had a $50,000 to $75,000 income; in 2003, it was 18 percent. In 1967, 22 percent of households were in the $35,000 to $50,000 income group; by 2003, it had fallen to 15 percent. During the same period, the $15,000 to $35,000 category fell from 31 percent to 25 percent, and the under $15,000 category fell from 21 percent to 16 percent. The only reasonable conclusion from this evidence is that if the middle class is disappearing, it's doing so by swelling the ranks of the upper classes.



What about the concentration of wealth? In 1918, John D. Rockefeller's fortune accounted for more than half of one percent of total private wealth. To compile the same half of one percent of the private wealth in the United States today, you'd have to combine the fortunes of Microsoft's Bill Gates ($53 billion) and Paul Allen ($16 billion), Oracle's Larry Ellison ($19 billion), and a third of Berkshire Hathaway's Warren Buffett's $46 billion. In 1920, America's richest one percent held about 40 percent of private wealth; by 1980, the private wealth held by the richest one percent fell to about 20 percent and has remained stable at that level since.

And I thought clicked the slate one b/c that's the only one I recognized. I'll read it now.

[Kuya]

That economist is saying the opposite of well established facts. Whos is this specific economist?

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

Walter Williams

[Kuya]

Ah, a libertarian. Who's God is also known as the Invisible Hand.

He said, "I praise lassez-faire capitalism as being the most moral and most productive system man has ever devised. Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man."[4]

...yea

[SwampdonkeyPLD]

If you can get past the hyperbole I think he's worth using as a source.

[Cadsuane]

Fairtax isn't regressive. Sales taxes are, but the Fairtax eliminates the regressiveness.

This isn't really true. Fairtax is only levied on consumption spending which high income earners spend a smaller portion of their income on. Unless the fairtax is inordinately progressive on consumption, it will not be progressive on income earnings.

Mainly b/c they would be better for the economy, and the taxes wouldn't hidden likely making American lean more to right.

Debateable. Many economicsts call this general idea of focusing taxes on househoulds as a way to promote efficiency and growth an outdated and obsolete neo-liberal policy.

As an aside, what you said earlier about firms raising prices and not paying taxes isn't true. You're right that it depends on the product, more specifically the elasticities of the market involved. Basically, tax burdens are shared, and not often proportionally, by buyers and sellers.

And Kuya how would you eliminate income disparity? Pass a law that limits what people can make?

I don't think anyone wants something silly like that. Here's an example: We want stuff like more compact urbanistic cities with efficient public transportation, specifically to mitigate suburban sprawl and the social barriers that detached houses and cars present. We want a society in which where you end up has little or nothing to do with what you started with; such a society would doubtlessly have less income disparity than ours does.